Greatest Hits Gone By - Tischman on his Vertigo Series

Greatest Hits #6
When you think of the words ‘Greatest Hits’ what do you think of? For
more, it’s a compilation of the most popular songs by a band or
performer over the course of their career. Hopefully, it highlights the
various points in their career into one cohesive package, taking the
best of what’s out there to represent the musicians. In music that’s
great, but in comics you want a story showing the good and the bad –
the highs and the lows – and that’s just what the recent series The Greatest Hits did—but with superheroes.

Published by 2008 by Vertigo, the six-issue series focuses on a English
superhero quartet called ‘The Mates’ and their humble debut in the
1960s to the drug fueled 70s and into the present day. From the heights
of their glory to the depths of excess, their story is told from the
point of view of a Hollywood director who has his own ties to the team.

The series was by writer David Tischman and artist Glenn Fabry, and
they ably tell the story of a superhero team whose celebrity status
seems to overshadow their hero efforts. Their story is told through a Behind The Music-like
documentary by Nick Mansfield, whose father was the primary reporter
covering the heroes’ career at the expense of raising his son. Fabry’s
been a staple of Vertigo books, and this rare interior work shows a
clean line work that gives the story a perfect platform to examine the
different eras that Mates operated the emotions of the team members and
their friends and family.

With The Greatest Hits miniseries recently concluded and a
collected edition planned for later this year, we talked with Tischman
by email about the series and future possible stories.

Newsarama: Pressed to describe this in as concise manner as
possible, I’d have to say it’s the Beatles as superheroes in a tell-all
biography. You’re the author not me, so how would you describe it?

Greatest Hits #3
David Tischman: Yes--but no. I think that's what people were expecting, but the Mates were never intended to be the Beatles. In Greatest Hits,
the super-hero team is meant to have the place in our public
consciousness--in the social and cultural zeitgeist--that the Beatles
do. More "cultural icons" who can be identified by every living person
on the planet, than a direct knock-off. That's the way I see it. At
it's core, Greatest Hits is about heroes, and the forms that
takes--and how the public's expectations of who you are is so radically
different from the person you become. That’s where the Beatles
analogy works--how long has it been since the Beatles broke up? People
still expect Paul McCartney to be the same person he was on the "Ed
Sullivan Show."

NRAMA: The miniseries just wrapped up and a collected edition is
in the wings somewhere at DC, so let’s talk about the series as a whole
– spoilers and all. Although it’s superheroes – at its core, the comic
is really about the culture of celebrity and how those in the spotlight
and those in the background are affected by it. Can you tell us your
thought process in interweaving all these threads of music,
superheroes, celebrity and film together into one thread?

DT: I wish we'd had more space to get MORE into the music stuff.
Originally--and because the story takes place over so many decades--we
wanted to show how the powers of the heroes changed in a way that
reflected the music of that generation. Meaning, in the 70's more
heroes did drugs to augment their powers. In the 80's, at the beginning
of the tech boom, we see more armored heroes, because it's cool and
because the armor makes them harder to kill. In the 90's we see a
return to basics, a stripped-down hero, along the lines of Batman, as
if Kurt Cobain became a super-hero. Coming into the 21st century, many
of the heroes are younger, often teens, who are given their powers by
corporations, and who have no real sense of the heroic legacy of the
Mates. We tell a great story, but all that would've added another four
issues! It's there, it's just subtle.

NRAMA: I read in another interview that the final fate of Nick
wasn’t what you originally planned. In the book he does the film but
ultimately reneges on releasing it, empowering him in some way to get
outside his father’s shadow. Where was the swerve for you, and how did
it come about?

Greatest Hits #1
There WAS a "swerve" as I was writing--the whole idea that Archie,
who's an asshole, and who abandoned Nick and who Nick hates--the idea
that Archie does what he does and handles it the way he does--okay,
yes, all six issues are out, but I'm not going to lay it ALL out, go
back and READ! That idea came about as I was writing the third issue,
and it definitely affected a lot of the pages moving forward.

NRAMA: Yeah, let’s save something for the collection.

The make-up of the team conveys a familiar formula to the casting of
teams, whether they be superhero teams in comics to members of of a boy
band. The shy one, the dark one, etc. Why do you think this formula is
so prevalent, and how did it work for you in the confines of this book?

DT: When you look at any super-team, the mix of powers you need
is the same as the mix in a band. Specifically a boy band, but any
band, really. Just like no one wants to see an entire super-team of
Iron Mans, you don't want to see an entire band of drummers. But going
back to the band thing--and I will use the Beatles for this one. Every
super-team has a beacon of goodness, i.e. a Superman type. That's
Paul's function. To balance that out, you need a hero who is more
"black and white," with a dark personality. That's a Batman-type, or
someone like John. Spiritually, the Beatles had George, and the
Defenders had Dr. Strange. Finally, you need the wise-ass of the group,
the impish guy--remember when that was Plastic Man in the Justice
League? That's Ringo. In the Mates, we made their powers an extension
of those personas. On the drummer, though, we did stir a little Keith
Moon into the mix. Just for fun.

NRAMA: I’m sure every band could benefit from a little Keith Moon.

I’m a little ashamed to admit, but when I first read about this book I
glossed over it a bit. Superheroes under the Vertigo Imprint seemed
like an odd fit, but when a friend of mine let me borrow several issues
I could see why it worked. Describe for us how these superheroes can
fit so well into the Vertigo framework?

DT: For me, I wish Vertigo did MORE super-hero books. I
understand why they don't, but super-heroes are the staple of comics,
and the darker takes and motivations on heroic characters is often too
"hard" for mainstream publishers. And, frankly, if you look at the
line, Karen Berger's done a lot of super-hero books--maybe not tights
and capes heroes, but Animal Man and Black Orchid and Swamp Thing and Sandman and Sandman Mystery Theater--all huge titles--are the "harder" super-hero forms I just mentioned.

Greatest Hits #2
NRAMA: You’re working with a British comics institution in Glenn
Fabry. Was he on this project early on? How did his involvement color
the direction the series develop?

DT: Glenn has been on the project since Day One, which goes back
father than any of us really want to go! As we were working on the
book, I'd send Glenn e-mails every week, because the pages were just so
fucking good. Glenn's responsible for the look of the book, and he kept
the book honest, in terms of period detail and in terms of the Mates'
British roots. He's always such a gentleman about it, but there were a
couple times when I'd get a note, maybe a Brit would say this line a
bit differently, or in England at the time, they did this--all of it
very smart, and very constructive, and it added another layer to the
book that a guy from New Jersey--me--wasn't able to bring to the table.

NRAMA: Depending on sales of the collected edition, could you see more stories in the future for Nick or the Greatest Hits?

DT: Based on the readers and the fan reaction I get at cons,
yeah--I'd love to do more stories about the Mates. Especially the
Solicitor. For some reason, he's everybody's favorite. There's a great
Solicitor story to be told. Him and Soul Sister in New York in the
70's. That'd be fun.